Hi all,
I want to buy a garden vac which can pick up all the leaves that are about to fall. I want something that can handle both wet and dry leaves. If it can shred small twigs, even better. I looked at the "Black & Decker GW350 Shredder Vac". Looks good, but I wonder if anyone can speak from experience about this sort of thing.
TIA,
Ian
I have the B&D GW350. It blows and it sucks.
Realistically unless your leaves are dry and on the patio/lawn its a waste of time. I have 2 oak trees which shed most of the leaves on flower beds/bare soil. In order to pick up damp leaves from the soil you invariably have to get so close to the soil that loose bits of earth get sucked up as well, and you are forever dismantling and unclogging the vac.
I actually find it quicker to hand rake the leaves onto the lawn and use the rotary mower set to a high height to vacuum them up.
My personal opinion - waste of money.
Slurp
I wanted to get one for collecting leaves dropped on our gravel parking area. I had a look at a flymo one that seemed ok, and then noticed that B&Qs "own brand" was actually an identical unit (except in green rather than orange) and half the price, so went for that.
It can blow, suck, or do a combination of both with a little "chip jet" that helps lift some types of stuff. Seems to work well enough for the task I bought it for, in that it picks up and shreds the leaves but does not quite have enough suck to lift the gravel!
They are still slightly hard work when the leaves are damp since you need to take more time getting it to pick them up, and they also get rather heavy to carry once they are full of shredded wet stuff.
I've got the Flymo one and have had it for ages.
My one criticism is the weight when full as you say, John.
One way round this is to use the blower first to round up the leaves into a smaller area. Then you can pick up most of them in large handfuls and finally just suck up the remainder.
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